Modeling social support on social media: Effect of publicness and the underlying mechanisms

Research has suggested social media might not be an ideal place to get social support. This study examined how publicness of support seeking might influence the quantity and quality of received support by testing six potential underlying mechanisms. We conducted a 3 (publicness: private, medium, public) X 2 (problem severity: mild vs. severe) between-subjects online experiment with 196 college students. Participants were shown a screenshot of a fellow student's message about a recent adverse experience that was either delivered as a public post, a post visible to friends, or a private message. Compared with public support seeking, private message led to higher likelihood to help among observers, more effort in helping, and higher quality of supportive messages. Specifically, publicness increased attribution to social validation goal when the problem was not severe, reduced attribution to support-seeking goal when the problem was severe, reduced favorable perceptions and perception of personalism, which all contributed to the failure of support seeking.